Day 142 | October 15

Since the only thing I really want out of life is to sit quietly in the morning and read the Wall Street Journal whilst having my coffee I was pretty excited about our rooftop set up. I woke up early and made some of the tea that I’d bought the evening before and headed up to the roof. I was totally blown away by our view of the sunrise. Sitting on our roof watching the sun come up after a night in a soft bed with fresh sheets was a transformative experience. We are in our fifth month of travel now and Morocco (Rabat more specifically) has really been taking a toll on everyone. Suddenly, though, I was feeling much better about everything. Apparently Stacey felt the same way because when she joined me a while later it took us about two minutes to decide that we would be extending our weekend getaway to Tangier through the next week.

Now the most important thing was finding breakfast. On our walk the day prior we had spotted a really cool looking rooftop patio belonging to Salon Bleu so we walked over there hoping to get breakfast. Despite the information we had indicating that this should have been possible they weren’t open. …a frequent problem in Morocco, and in the rest of the world actually I’ve discovered. For want of better options nearby we made our way back to the Morocco Club and discovered they had a nice outdoor cafe that they do lunch out of so we had a simple breakfast there.

Now that we had so much more time to see things around Tangier we weren’t feeling rushed at all so we decided to go back home to rest for a bit. This led to an obligatory viewing of Casablanca, being as we’re in Morocco and all. Our new buddy Karim had put together an excursion for us in the evening out to the coast.

Cap Spartel
Cap Spartel

The first stop was Cap Spartel which is the lighthouse that marks where the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea meet. This is where having Karim really paid off as he knew the lighthouse keeper so was able to get him to unlock the gates and let us actually go into area where the lighthouse was while everyone else had to stay back several hundred yards.

Inside Hercules Caves
Inside Hercules Caves

After this we drove further down the coast to the Hercules Caves which are famous coastal caves that are actually in the shape of Africa when you look out from them. We had some snacks at a nearby cafe while waiting for sunset so we could get some photos. In the moment we had the brilliant idea to shoot a time lapse of the sunset which made for a stressful 20 minutes making sure the camera didn’t get disrupted by all the tourists hustling around but it came out great.

img_20161015_194249On the way home Karim and our driver were good enough to point out what is one of the only liqour stores in Tangier and we stopped in there to stock up on wine. The place was hilariously bustling and just getting in and out intact was a major achievement in my book. Then it was back home to have our wine on top of our awesome rooftop.

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